With a lot of interest in my nest boxes in the last week or so, I was anxious to get the final one up….yes, really the last small nest box for my garden! This nest box is available from the Wildlife Whisperer site and you will be able to read about it in more detail very soon on my main site at www.wildlifekate.co.uk.
I really like this box for a number of reasons… it is well made, out of red cedar and does not need any treatment. In some of my other nest boxes, though, the camera does not have a wide enough angle to be able to see the entrance hole as well as the whole base of the nest box. This is really useful at the beginning of the season when you want to know if the birds are looking in.
This camera clearly shows the whole bottom of the box, and the entrance hole. You can see this on the photo below…. I stuck my finger through the entrance hole and you can see how it clearly shows this and the full base of the nest box. The advantage of using the USB connector is that you can then run a program such as i-catcher. This program ‘watches’ the nest box and takes photos when there is movement. It will be interesting to see how quickly the birds find it!
I decided to set this nest box up in the very far end of my goat’s run. The goats live behind my patio area and their run backs onto the neighbour’s garden. There is a hawthorn tree here, covered in ivy and this is the site I chose. It is far enough away from the other boxes and in a good position.
I also put a camera into the HandyKam nest box in the plum tree. This box has been up a couple of weeks now, without the camera, but with a counter from NatureCounters on the front. That has registered over 200 entries, so it looks promising. I mounted one of HandyKam’s new Sony high res cameras in here and it is looking good! Again, there will be some more details about this box and its set up on my main site very soon.
In high winds (yes, I did nearly get blown off of the ladder!), I then managed to wire these two back to my office and tried to sort the spaghetti junction under my desk! I have so many wires and power supplies under there now, it can all get a bit confusing! All the wires have to be labelled so I know which is which and so I can swap easily between one feed and another.
My Gardenature ‘side box’ on a fir tree has also been without a camera as I moved its camera into my mouse box when the nesting season was over. Today, I put the camera back in, so mouse box will be out of action for a bit until I move it and re wire it. I had to take the front of the nest box off to put the camera inside and I found evidence of something roosting in there at night. Tonight, that has been confirmed! I seem to have a great tit roosting in there. Let’s hope he (or she) decides to nest in there this season.
So, just about all the nest boxes now have their cameras back inside. The only one that hasn’t is the HandyKam one near the feeders. The feeder camera uses its wire at the moment. As we get closer to the breeding season and when the weather improves, I will stop feeding at this site and then move the wiring over.
Hopefully I will be bringing you some more images from these nest boxes in the coming weeks.
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